Sledge-hammers, spike mauls, pick axes, and other heavy duty handle-mounted tools are used throughout a variety of industries such as the railroad industry and the construction industry. These tools generally include some type of working head and a handle attached to and extending from the head. In particular, the handle is mounted in a throughbore centrally located in the working head. The handles for such tools are often made of wood, although they could be made of other suitable materials. These tools are subjected to repetitive and extreme forces often resulting in a broken, damaged, and/or worn handle which needs to be replaced by removing the old handle from the working head and replacing it with a new handle.
Heretofore, broken, damaged, and/or worn handles have been removed by hand by sawing, cutting, chiseling, drilling, and/or prying the end of the handle from the central bore in the head. Manually removing handles using such methods has been relatively difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Moreover, the operation of removing these handles may result in injury caused by the removal tools or from extracted pieces of the handles. Accordingly, there is a need for an quick, economical, and safe apparatus for automatically removing a broken, damaged, and/or used handle from a sledge-hammer, spike maul, pick axe, and other handle-mounted tools.